Kingdoms of the Night (The Far Kingdoms)

by Allan Cole, Chris Bunch

  One more time ropes went down the side of the rocks and we slithered back to the road’s level. We tried to hide in the crevasse as much as possible but it wasn’t big enough for more than sixty people. I bade the others to crawl out and lie still along the rocks until the order was given to move.

  Luckily our furs had been chosen for their mottled appearance, drably fitting in with the stones and snow. Once more Te-Date smiled and we were undiscovered. Our chance now was to move as quickly as possible on up the pass until we’d be lost to sight. At that point we’d drop off rear scouts and travel on, knowing that sooner or later our evasion would be discovered.

  But it did not happen that handily. The way was hard, breaking through virgin snow almost to the waist. And we’d gone but half a hundred yards when I heard a dim commotion from behind and we were discovered.

  There was no point in silence now so I began issuing commands, keeping my voice calm and controlled.

  Quatervals and the others followed suit: “All right now... Don’t waste energy looking back... We’re movin’ as fast as they are... Pay ’tention t’ yer footin’ an’ help yer mate... There’s no cause t’ fret, we’ve got a long lead on ’em.”

  But we did not have much of a lead. I stopped and let the column stumble past. My duty was to be at the rear of the formation, facing the Wardens, Modin and Cligus and his Orissans. Quatervals saw me and he and Otavi fell out of line as well. Janela and Towra stayed at the head of the column, setting as fast a pace as possible.

  I desperately wanted to see some curve in this pass or places where debris had fallen we could use for shelter to fight a holding action that might give us time to break free. But the Old Ones had built well — the pass ran straight as an arrow’s flight nearly halfway to the summit before it curved left at the first knuckle. There were but few boulders that’d fallen — the road had been cut cleanly through the rock as if a red-hot blade were making a deep vee-slice in butter.

  There was no shelter, nor could we even dream of fleeing up the sides of the cut for safety.

  The others went past, gasping with effort as they forced themselves onward a step at a time. I doubt if many of them noticed me. Their eyes saw no more but a patch of snow... a foot lift... come down... and come up again, trying to carry on, trying to keep from falling. I saw with dismay that the sailors, the least experience at moving on land, were beginning to drop back. I shouted for Janela to slow the pace and ordered Quatervals to name the rear guard.

  He bellowed commands as the last man, Mithraik, came even with me. I noticed the look on the pirate’s face, pale, terrified, although he didn’t even seem to be breathing hard. I wondered why he wasn’t at the front where it would be the safest for the longest time. I wondered what had broken him on our long journey — he’d seemed more than brave fighting the half-men back in the jungle city or the crocodiles of the river.

  “Hold, you,” I ordered, trying to shock him out of his fear. “Stand and fight with us.”

  His eyes widened and he seemed about to protest, but then he firmed up his lip.

  “Aye, Antero,” he said, and there was no pretense of humility in his voice. “As you say. If here’s the place, then here’s where I’ll leave my mark.”

  I was looking past him toward Cligus’ army. It’s all too easy to sneer at soldiers in pretty uniforms and say they probably know nothing more than bashing the parade square or shining their brass and assume so-called elite formations are such in name only. But these Wardens deserved their reputation, no matter how murderous and criminal their behavior had been in Irayas.

  In the few minutes since we’d been sighted they’d broken out of their ambush positions, formed up and started up the snowy road after us. They marched in three ranks with flankers in front and I heard the shouting of their warrants and officers for more speed to catch those damned renegades.

  They were climbing faster than we were, even though there were several hundred of them.

  “Quatervals, you’re the expert. What can we do?”

  “’Tisn’t but one thing,” he said. “We’ll split the party. I’ll stay with, say a third of the men and we’ll hold ’em as long as we can. Meantimes you an’ Lady Greycloak streak for the pass. Once over, try to go to ground. Move on when you’re sure you’ve evaded ’em.”

  I started to protest and Quatervals shook his head. “And I don’t want to be hearin’ any gods-damned bleedin’ about how you should stand here an’ fight. You an’ the lady make a pair an’ it’ll take the both of you to win through. Now don’t be six kinds of a fool, my Lord, and kindly get your arse forward and keep on movin’. Put up a plaque or somethin’ in Orissa for us when you make it through.”

  Otavi had come up beside him and was listening. He nodded his head in agreement.

  “He’s right, m’lord. An’ this appears to be as good a place to die as any.” He spat on his hands and swung his huge ax back and forth, warming up.

  There were others coming back down the mountain to join him and my eyes blurred as I saw they were my best — Kele; Chons and Maha, my other two stalwarts who’d battled the demon that was Lord Senac; the Cyralian brothers; and others I’d known and traveled beside for years. Even Pip stood among them.

  He saw I’d noted him and looked abashed. “Times a wee lad’d rather do anythin’ but wear his footers out on these demon-bless’t rocks. An’ I’m hopin’ you pays death benefits prompt like y’ promised, or m’ old bitch’ll be on yer like stink on shit.”

  Brave men and women all.

  Then there was a windrush and I saw a blur out of the corner of my eye. I flung myself flat, heard a loud crunching thud and blood spattered the snow.

  I lifted my head to see Chons’ body tumble, nearly cut in two by a monstrous iron bolt.

  Quatervals swore. “They’ve brought engines!”

  And they had. I saw small groups of men winding large pedestal-mounted crossbows, lifting iron darts nearly the length of a man into their troughs. They were firing over the heads of the advancing infantry. Another bolt hummed in and shattered against the rock wall, and yet another.

  Archers below chanced their first volleys but they fell yards short of us.

  “Lord Amalric,” Quatervals ordered. “Get you gone, sir! Now!”

  I turned to obey, feeling like a coward but knowing Quatervals was right. The enemy was now only a hundred yards or so away and now their arrows were beginning to land among us, even though they weren’t aimed well by those hard breathing men in red below us.

  A man shouted agony and one of the Cyralian brothers stumbled forward, hands feebly plucking at the arrow that stood out from his lungs. Blood frothed, buried his pain and he fell face down.

  We still had the advantage of height and our own arrows volleyed up and then dropped full into their forward ranks. It was impossible for any of my men to miss, firing into the packed mass of Cligus’ still-charging troops.

  They were close enough for me to hear one of their sergeants bellow: “Take th’ old man one alive! Lord Cligus wants him for hisself,” and found a moment for a wry grin — if he did capture me, which I had no intent of allowing, he’d certainly not recognize his father who now looked some years younger.

  If I didn’t manage to escape, most certainly I’d be slain by one of the soldiery in ignorance. I slogged away to rejoin the rest of my retreating party, suddenly aware I had a great duty to Janela. If we did not escape, I must not allow her to fall into Modin’s hands.

  Just behind me came an animal bellow and despite myself, I spun.

  It was Mithraik, roaring like a beast.

  “Antero! Antero!” and I could barely distinguish the words. “Here is the place! You’re sealed to me! You and yer cow!” and he began changing, writhing, growing until he reared tall, as tall or taller than Lord Senac and his furs ripped, revealing a body that was red, raw, like a flayed man, slime oozing from its pores.

  The demon that had been Mithraik, the demon that had been set to betray
us from within roared defiance at all men — Cligus’ as well as my own. Otavi hurled his ax but the demon brushed it aside.

  The beast was nearly twenty feet tall and I could smell its stink from where I stood. It had clawed feet and two arms, each pincered like those of a marine animal. But its face was the worst, a protruding forehead with bulging eyes like a man strangling, skin hard pulled back over its cheeks to reveal gross fangs that reached up almost to its nose-slits and down to where a chin should have been.

  Hair hung in clumps from the monster’s face and roaring, roaring, incoherently as it completed its transformation, it started toward me.

  An arrow hummed past, cutting deep into its cheek, sending ichor flying and the creature turned, screaming anger and no doubt a promise to kill its attacker as soon as it finished me. Not ten feet away, just below it, was Quatervals. He held the bow of the fallen Cyralian, aiming upward.

  His stance was perfect, as if he were shooting for range or perhaps demonstrating how to fire over a foe’s front line. An arrow was full-drawn, broadhead just touching the rest and he made his shot.

  The shaft flew true and buried itself in one of the demon’s eyes. It screamed once more and the rocks around us shook with its pain and anger and then it stumbled forward, staggered and fell, rolling, tumbling down the slope, still struggling for its feet.

  Then it was up, trying to stop its momentum, blinded, the horrid fluid that must have been its blood spraying into the middle of Cligus’ men.

  Blind with agony, it cared not who it slew and slashed about. Warders and Orissan soldiers howled and fell and now they had no time for us as the monster savaged their ranks.

  Perhaps the awful magic that had been worked by the demon’s transformation freed Janela’s spell or perhaps that presence was taken by surprise, because suddenly a mist rose around us and from behind us, a thick summer mist that could take a mountain traveler by surprise and make him lose his way, no matter how familiar a path he might be on and fall to his death into a hidden crevasse.

  But we had no such worries. Quatervals and I shouted orders — move, move, move, damn your eyes! Uphill! You can’t get lost, you can’t go wrong and we were stumbling away, the sounds of battle behind us, the demon’s shrieks louder than ever as it did our slaughter for us.

  Fear and the blood-rush of battle transferred to our feet and we waded on and on, each of us alone in a private world of white and gray and then we broke free of the mist.

  Two dozen yards in front of us waited Janela and the others. They were in battle formation but Janela was some feet in front, crouched in the snow.

  “I saw,” she said, without lifting her eyes from her work. “The bastards set a spy on us and I never sensed a thing. Amalric, tell me when you think everybody’s safe and I’ll see if my second trick works.”

  I did, counting as they passed and blessed the gods for that tally-sheet that was always a part of my merchant’s brain. There’d been twenty six people who’d chosen to stand with the rear guard and I wondered how it had time to make such a reckoning and now came eighteen... nineteen, which was Otavi, who’d managed to recover his ax, one more... and then Quatervals.

  “I’m the last,” he croaked, finally showing some signs of human exhaustion.

  I still waited for another half-minute, hoping there’d be some others come out of the roiling mist. But no one appeared. We’d lost five friends down there and my heart whispered pain to me, even though my head told me true that we were unbelievably lucky to have suffered that few deaths.

  Below, Mithraik’s demon howls were growing fainter. Even a monster like it would eventually be taken down by that many men.

  “That’s all,” Janela said, a bit of impatience in her tone. “Get behind me, Amalric. This one might be a bit spectacular.”

  She’d rolled half a dozen small balls of snow and held them in her palm together with some pebbles she’d picked up on the rocks. I don’t know whether she’d already said words over them or doused them with some potion but she began snapping them away down the road as she simply chanted:

  Move away

  Roll on

  You have brothers

  You are great

  Now grow

  Now roll

  Gather as you go.

  Most of us have made snowballs as children and rolled them down steep slopes in the hopes of creating an avalanche. It never worked for me but I never lost hope of one day creating a truly monstrous slide that would wipe an entire slope clean.

  Janela’s spell fulfilled my finest dreams as the tiny snowballs rolled, gathering snow as if they were lodestones, rolling even faster than the road’s steep slope would warrant. From the high slopes above the road came other rumblings as snow banks high above us let go.

  None of us could see what happened but the road was swept clean and we heard the roar as the avalanche crashed down on Cligus and his men.

  Janela rose, her expression startled.

  “I didn’t plan for that,” she said. “The best I’d hoped for was to pitch the snow in front of us down on the bastards. I wonder if...” she looked around thoughtfully. “No. I’ve got to be wrong. I wondered if somehow that presence was helping us, which makes no sense at all.

  “I guess somehow my measurement was off and I managed to create a thousand-fold snowball instead of tens or hundreds. Or perhaps Cligus and that pox-ridden Modin are finally getting a share of bad luck.”

  “We can theorize later,” I said. “You, or the gods or the demons or whoever have given us more time than I could dream of. Call it luck if you want. We’ll make the correct sacrifices at a better time.”

  She slung her bag and we moved out.

  Perhaps it was luck or maybe the degree of the slope did lessen, but it seemed easier to travel now and in half an hour we rounded the bend of the knuckle.

  It was growing dark but we could not stop. I put men out front with firebeads and pushed on. We stopped once at midnight; melted snow and ate jerked meat, dried fish and boiled sweets we’d carried with us. Then we went on. If there was an ambush or an enemy ahead we’d rather chance the unknown than what was coming hard behind us — I knew better than to dream Mithraik could have destroyed the entire pursuing army.

  Just at dawn we reached the summit and a great, drear plateau spread out below us with a fog-shrouded mountain range in the dim distance.

  We took a break and now, feeling no sign of pursuit, had time to feel the fatigue that was sucking the marrow from our souls and bones.

  “Why is’t,” Quatervals wondered, staring out over the steppes we would be crossing, “th’ romances never tell you beyond th’ great hill’s most likely going to be another damned great hill, vaster’n the one before?”

  There wasn’t any answer so we pressed on.

  We stopped after another hour and I ordered two hours sleep. Only four of us stood guard, Quatervals not among them. My entire body moaned for sleep, cried out to lie down just for one minute on that welcoming ground but dared not even lean against a rock.

  I finally found a shortspear and propped its point just under the skin of my chin. Twice I awoke with blood trickling down my neck but at least I stayed conscious.

  We marched on for another six hours then chanced two hours rest. This time I slept, letting Quatervals have the watch.

  We went on like that for two full days and nights, never daring to stop for more than two hours, not until we would reach some sort of safety.

  On this side of the Fist of the Gods the road was in better repair — cutting almost straight toward the sere flatlands below.

  By the end of the second day we had reached the last of the snow but the barren foothills offered no sign of shelter.

  We could hold my torturous schedule no longer. We were now so groggy the most minor danger we might stumble into could allow the party to be wiped out. We sheltered just off the road and allowed a full six hours for sleep. Then up and on. After this longer break I felt worse than I had befo
re, with every bone creaking, every muscle begging for relief.

  I pushed my company harder than I’d ever pushed any expedition. They glared at me hating me but not having the strength to swear. Not even Pip complained and I knew we were close to the end of our powers.

  A day and a half later we were on the flatlands. It remained cold and some of the men found energy to curse but I was grateful. Men travel better in cold than heat. The road still shot ahead, never turning, never rising, regularly marked by the two-faced woman/demon head toward its unseen end against the further mountains that must be Tyrenia.

  We could go no further without rest. We turned aside and marched for three hours at a sharp angle away from the road. Quatervals and his Scouts were at the rear, calling on every bit of their cunning to mask our trail, and Janela was with them, using her sorcery to keep anyone from being able to follow our path.

  We found a cleft in the seemingly featureless plain that was nearly a valley, almost a hundred feet deep with two springs, a pool and trees.

  Someone, Quatervals most likely, lifted my pack off and laid out my bedroll. I fell across it not bothering to take off my boots or crawl in and slept for a full day with no memory of having come to the end of this march.

  I awoke to a truly monstrous noise.

  “Back an’ side go bare, go bare

  Both foot an’ hand go cold

  I’ll see no more ale in my life

  This road goes on so bold

  It stretches far

  It stretches long

  Antero drives us hard

  I far I’ll be naught but bones

  Before I reach th’...”

  The voice — Pip’s — broke out of what he imagined to be song and asked, plaintively, “An’ what’s rhymin’ wi’ hard?”